Reflections on the Brawner Farm

It’s usually not my practice to post things without giving them much thought (at least from what you, the reader can see in my words here… but I’m surely giving it thought “off-paper” or, considering the platform… “off-web”), but… in that this is almost 150 years to the hour since it began, this evening my thoughts are with the fight at the Brawner Farm. I’ve walked the ground many times, and especially enjoy doing so near dusk. It was in this fight that several of my relatives, wearing gray and counted among the 33rd Virginia Infantry of the Stonewall Brigade, slugged it out with the Iron Brigade. I sincerely doubt that many today can fathom the intensity of the fight, and to walk the ground near dusk, even with the sounds of crickets and passing traffic, it’s certainly nearer to a deafening silence than to what it must have sounded like on the evening of August 28, 1862.

You can watch a brief video clip (from Civil War Trust) of Ranger Jim Burgess talking about the fight… here.